by Jenny Lee
These were lies Dustin told himself standing before all the red roses that filled the store. But sometimes he knew it was best to believe the stories you told yourself in order get through a day. After all, didn’t the cornerstone of sober living preach getting through life one day at a time?
VII
Lolly knew there were haters out there who wondered how she’d managed to land a hottie like Steven. Well, it wasn’t luck, because Lolly worked very hard to get one of the most eligible boys in the city. Lolly knew she wasn’t naturally beautiful herself, but what she lacked in nature’s gifts, she more than made up for in effort. Lolly was “money pretty,” and she knew it. Her hair had four-hundred-dollar highlights and was cut every eight weeks. Her nails were always perfect and done in the latest fashion. She had gotten a nose job during middle school and even though she requested Reese Witherspoon’s nose and ended up with Michelle Williams’s slightly thinner nose instead, she accepted it gracefully. Lolly had been on a diet since she was thirteen, went to SoulCycle three times a week, did a hundred sit-ups every night before bed, and even secretly bought some waist-shaping bodywear she saw advertised on Instagram that supposedly tightened her core as she slept.
Every compliment she received about her looks, from her mother’s friends, her pear-shaped grandmother, or even sketchy men who whistled at her on the street, Lolly appreciated. She drank up compliments like a camel, storing them up for later, because only she knew just how hard she had worked to get them. So when she caught the attention of Steven at SoulCycle one afternoon two years ago—his bike had been behind hers—she had never felt more glorious in her entire life.
“Damn girl, you rocked it today on those hills.” Those were the first words Steven had ever spoken to her. Well, that’s not true, because two weeks previously he had said, “Yo, wrong bike, Ponytail,” at which point Lolly was so embarrassed she almost fell trying to unclip her shoes and move over for him. To her, those words didn’t really count, because he would have said them to anyone, and so they shouldn’t count as his first words specifically to her.
Of course, she already knew who he was, noticing him months ago in class and carefully noting what times and teachers he preferred. She was a motivated exerciser already, but a little eye candy never hurt anyone, right? Steven was one of the best-looking guys at Collegiate—he was six feet tall, had an eight-pack from lacrosse and tennis, and looked like a studly mashup of John Cho and Ryan Gosling—and if that weren’t enough, he also had this New Year’s Eve party that was so notorious it made him famous throughout almost every high school in the tri-state area. Lolly, not knowing how she found the nerve, replied to his compliment by asking him if he wanted to stay for a double ride with her.
“Damn, you can do two classes in a row? Hashtag ballerbitch,” he responded. Steven had only been doing SoulCycle for the past three months and still couldn’t believe how difficult it was for him.
“I don’t do them all the time, but I’ve done a few. It’s easier than it sounds. It’s an endorphin thing, I think.” Lolly was sure her voice was shaking as she spoke to him, but luckily the music was loud enough to drown out any tremble in her tone. “Wanna try?” she added, praying this unbelievably cute boy in front of her said yes.
“Hellz yezz, let’s do it,” he said. Steven prided himself on being up for anything and everything, and he seized any opportunity to try something new if it gave him bragging rights. Also, he had just spent the last forty-five minutes staring at Lolly’s ass in the last class, so he was pretty gung-ho.
The entire time during their impromptu second class together Lolly didn’t feel any pain at all. In fact, it was probably the easiest class she had ever done, because she was on cloud nine over the whole “seat-cute meet-cute” situation. And as fate would have it, Steven had just recovered from a particularly epic coke bender a few days prior and had decided to chill with the drugs for a bit and start taking better care of himself. The timing was perfect all the way around. Steven was good at excess, but not with excess free time, and so he asked Lolly if she wanted to see a movie that weekend. Lolly knew this was her best shot at Steven, and she took it with gusto. Every time Lolly saw Steven over the next month, she spent at least ninety minutes getting ready, sometimes a full two hours. She had already read every fashion magazine, but during that time she stepped up her already high-maintenance beauty routine. She watched every contouring tutorial on YouTube and agonized over each and every outfit she wore in front of him. And all her efforts paid off beautifully, because Steven, witnessing her transformation, found Lolly to be better and better looking each time he took her out, which tricked him into believing that this was a result of his growing feelings for her.
Steven told her that Korean women who lived in Seoul would spend hours getting ready before going to the supermarket, and that outward appearances were of paramount importance. He worked hard to keep his body in top form and dressed impeccably, and Lolly felt it was only fair of him to expect the same of his girlfriend. When Steven told Lolly she was practically Korean in her hard-core type-A diligence when it came to her looks, it was the highest compliment he had ever paid her and he meant it. Lolly adored how often Steven told her she was beautiful, but she fell in love with him because he was honest enough to tell her when he thought she had made a misstep with her outfit or hair. Her best friends, Miley and Hannah, thought this made Steven an asshole, but Lolly defended him and fully admitted that every single time he said something like this he had been right. Lolly was proud of Steven’s eye for fashion and for being a stickler when it came to details. He could even tell the difference between when Lolly had synthetic eyelash extensions versus when she splurged and got the mink ones. It had taken Lolly three months of backbreaking work, but when Steven K. finally asked her to be his girlfriend, it was the proudest moment of her life.
She didn’t admit any of this superficial stuff when she talked to Anna last week, but that was only because Anna was naturally gorgeous and seemed to achieve her own beauty effortlessly. The one thing that hurt the most after she found out about Steven’s cheating with “Brad” was not that he stuck it to some other girl, but that he hadn’t had the decency to have sex with someone who was prettier than she was; at least that she could understand. Lolly had a good visual memory and had seen enough naked pics of “Brad” on Steven’s Apple Watch to see her rival was no size zero. But the pics had given her hope because she knew Steven valued a woman’s looks. Perhaps the only thing he saw in the ho-bag was that she was DTF, and sex was something Lolly had been withholding.
So the morning after the “Brad incident,” when Lolly spent five minutes staring at her sleeping soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, in a surprising twist, she did a total 180 and decided she was going to have sex with him. Lolly had really wanted her first time to be with someone she loved (ideally someone who hadn’t slept with someone else!), but now she had a new plan. She would turn the tables on her philandering scumbag bf, give him exactly what he desired most, and then take it away forever. “Hump him and dump him!” as Miley liked to say.
Lolly had been the star of every school play for the last five years and knew she was a fine actress. That morning in bed with Steven, she gave the performance of a lifetime. She stripped down and slipped into bed with her sleeping beau, waking him up with a gentle kiss on the neck. Sure, Lolly liked fooling around with Steven, but she was always a little self-conscious about how she looked in the moment so she could never fully relax and enjoy herself. This time, however, Lolly came alive, like something woke up in her, and she found herself for the first time in a long time having fun. She didn’t give a single thought to how she looked or even how Steven thought she looked. She didn’t care if he was enjoying himself, either. She just felt free, and in doing so she started to get super turned on herself. Afterward, Steven was blown away by Lolly’s turnaround and started crying, begging Lolly to forgive him and promising he’d never cheat on her again.
Looking into her boyfriend�
�s eyes, Lolly remembered Anna’s final piece of advice from the night before. The only chance they had at a future was if Lolly loved him enough to find it in herself to forgive Steven for what he did to her. Trusting Anna’s wisdom, Lolly felt she did love him enough, and she forgave him. Ever since then Lolly and Steven had never been happier together.
A week and a half after her decision to stay with Steven, Lolly was at lunch with her two best friends, who were pestering her about her and Steven’s Valentine’s Day plans when the idea of the holiday blow job came up. “My mom was in such a foul mood this morning because she had a root canal scheduled and said it was bad timing because of the BJ my stepdad is expecting for Valentine’s Day,” Miley announced out of nowhere. Miley was one of those girls who liked to say things just to get a reaction. “Everyone knows that all boyfriends and husbands expect an extra-special blow job on major holidays. Their birthday blow job is probably the biggest deal of the year, but Valentine’s Day is probably second since usually it’s the man who must do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to V-Day gifts and such. I mean, it’s only fair they get rewarded for good behavior. And since I know you’re not gifting Steven your cherry anymore for Valentine’s Day as punishment for his very bad ‘Brad’ behavior, I guess you’re still on the hook to give him his celefellatio! You know, since you’re still his girlfriend. And no doubt Moneybags is getting you a killer gift.”
“Uch, why do we always have to talk about this stuff?” Hannah, who was still a virgin, asked Miley, whose V-train had long since left the station. “I mean, just because me and Lolls are still virgitarians doesn’t mean we’re like these pathetic repressed creatures who need to constantly be bombarded by the sexpertise of the one and only deflowered member of our trio.” Hannah winked at Lolly, who had confided in Hannah, but not yet Miley, that she’d lost her virginity to Steven on the snow day after the “Brad” debacle. Lolly and Miley had been best friends since kindergarten and had always maintained a strict pact that they would tell each other everything first, before they told Hannah. This was the first time Lolly broke the pact, knowing Hannah would be way more supportive in her decision to stay with Steven. Hannah was a theater geek like herself, who knew the words to every Broadway musical, which meant she was better equipped to understand that love and relationships were complicated, and that happy endings were made even better with a few power ballads of despair thrown in for good measure.
Miley rolled her eyes at Hannah. “Whatevs, just trying to help my bitches out, but if my help’s not wanted, then lots of luck, ladies…” She stopped for a moment, but then couldn’t help herself and went in for the kill shot. “I just don’t know how you could take him back after what he did! I mean I know you love him, but we all know he’s gonna do it again. My mom always says: once a cheater, always a cheater.”
Lolly remained calm even though she had told her friend earlier that morning she didn’t want to hear any more of her Steven bashing, but Miley was obsessed with her alpha status, which meant she had to have the last word. Right now, however, Lolly just didn’t want to get into it. It was important to keep at least one area of her life running smoothly, and since her home life was currently tension-filled she really needed her school life to stay chill.
But that didn’t mean she was going to share with Miley that she’d crossed the Rubicon with Steven and gone from virgitarian to carni-whore. What she was going to do was make sure she was as good in bed as any bf-sexting ho-bag from the South Bronx, if not better. So in preparation for Valentine’s Day, Lolly hid in her closet when she should have been doing homework (although couldn’t this be called homework?), put on her new gold Beats headphones, and typed the words “best blow job ever” into the search bar.
VIII
Steven’s dad had called him from Singapore and asked him to deliver his Valentine’s Day gift for his mother to the apartment. Well, “asked” was the wrong word; Steven’s father didn’t ask things from his only son, he demanded them. Steven, who couldn’t say no to his father, promised he would, but he knew the only way he could do it and not be late for his rendezvous with Lolly at 2 P.M. at the St. Regis was if he ran his father’s errand at lunch. So, Steven had Van Cleef & Arpels messenger his father’s gift to his school and then picked it up before leaving for the day.
It never once occurred to Steven that he should text his mom before showing up at the house, because, why would he? When he walked in his front door, he noticed a pair of size-thirteen limited edition Big Baller Brand sneakers by the door. Thinking about it later, Steven wondered why the shoes didn’t give him pause but for some reason he had just assumed they belonged to one of the many workmen who were installing the new cherry wood bookshelves in the library. This made no sense though, because Steven knew the designer kicks retailed for six hundred dollars at Barneys.
“Mom! Hey, Mom!” he called out, heading into the kitchen to see what he could find to eat for a quick lunch since he was missing pizza day at school.
When his mom didn’t answer, he put two Hot Pockets into the microwave and went looking for her. In the hall, he heard music coming from his parents’ bedroom. When Steven opened the bedroom door, his mother was lying on her back in bed while being attended to by some naked guy with an enormous winged dragon back tattoo. Steven’s first thought was he must be experiencing his first acid flashback, because there was no way what he was seeing was real.
Luckily his mom and Mr. Back Tattoo were so caught up in the throes of passion that neither of them noticed his presence in the doorway. Seconds later Steven was back in the hall with his forehead pressed against the wall and his mouth still hanging open. He just stood there listening to The Isley Brothers’ “Between the Sheets” playing loudly through the door. Steven instantly recognized it as the melody that The Notorious B.I.G. had sampled for “Big Poppa,” one of Steven’s all-time favorite rap songs, making the whole thing ten times worse. Dumbstruck was the only word that could properly describe Steven’s state of mind. Actually, flabbergasted and gobsmacked would also have worked. His bewilderment quickly turned to nausea, and he barely made it into the foyer bathroom before he threw up the chocolate Muscle Milk he had just downed minutes before.
Steven, shaky and sweating, paced around the foyer trying to decide what to do. Eventually he landed on a plan of action, which was to flee the scene of the crime he had just witnessed. He left his mom a Post-it Note on the front hall table along with her Valentine’s gift from her husband and took off.
Steven asked the doorman to hail him a cab as he felt unable to work his phone and order an Uber. Soon he was in the backseat heading toward the hotel. What struck Steven the hardest was his inability to process how he was feeling, besides being in dire need of mouthwash. Steven reminded himself that his dad regularly cheated on his mother, so it shouldn’t be surprising to find out his mother was doing the same, but it was. It just seemed so wrong and disgusting to him, mainly because this was his mother. He couldn’t really think of her as a woman, let alone a sexual being.
His mom was elegant and regal, which certainly didn’t correlate with what he had just witnessed. She had gone to the best schools, debuted in Greenwich and New York society, and was a very powerful woman in the highest social circles. So what the hell was she doing with some guy who had a tattoo of a clichéd dragon on his back? Also, the guy had to be young, like in his twenties, because no dude over thirty would know about the sneakers he’d seen in the hallway. That meant his own mother was banging some guy who wasn’t that much older than he was.
His mom received handwritten Christmas cards and fruit baskets from Anna Wintour. She’d stopped wearing skirts above the knee at forty, never showed cleavage unless the designer she commissioned a dress from demanded it. When she warned him to be careful and use birth control with Lolly and he confessed to her that she was making him wait, she praised Lolly for her proper upbringing and ladylike traits.
What he had seen a half hour ago was not ladylike behavior.
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Steven thought about calling Anna to tell her. Anna had texted him earlier, thanking him for the Valentine’s Day chocolates and reminding him she was on her way into the city for the dog show. Steven, of course, had forgotten all about it. He felt momentarily better knowing his sister was probably in the city right now, and that he could tell her in person later, if he chose to tell her at all.
Steven arrived at the St. Regis a bit early, which meant Lolly was probably not waiting for him yet. He wanted desperately to go to the King Cole Bar for a drink, but he knew they probably wouldn’t serve him. On the other hand, it was still early in the day and perhaps the bartender wouldn’t think a teenager would have the audacity to order booze in the middle of the afternoon. He wished he could tell Lolly what he’d seen, but he knew it was impossible. He couldn’t talk about his true feelings about people cheating so close to when he had just gotten busted himself. It hadn’t even been a week yet.
Sitting in the lobby, his right knee shaking nervously, Steven texted Dustin: Dude, it’s a no go this afternoon w/ V-Day. Tomo?
A reply from Dustin came in immediately. Figured as much. Yes re: tomo.
Steven texted back, You around late tonight? After midnight? Am having a thing.
Yeah, hit me up later. Happy V-Day.
Same 2 u bro.
Doubtful. Love sucks. Dustin’s last text made him wince, as Steven had forgotten about his friend’s own girl troubles. When Dustin had showed up on the Monday after the party for their tutoring session, Steven didn’t know whether his friend would want to talk about Kimmie. When Steven opened the door, Dustin’s first words had been, “Let’s never speak of her again, okay?”
